"Skin in a syringe" shows promise for advanced burn treatment

Severe burns and extensive wounds pose major challenges for patient recovery, as the skin serves as a vital barrier against the environment. Conventional treatments often rely on thin epidermal transplants, but these lack deeper structures and typically result in significant scarring. 

The dermis, which lies beneath the epidermis, contains blood vessels, nerves, and connective tissues essential for elasticity and normal function. Creating artificial dermis remains difficult since its complexity is still not fully understood. 

To address these challenges, researchers at the Swedish Center for Disaster Medicine and Traumatology and Linköping University developed a method that combines: 

• Gelatine beads serving as a scaffold for fibroblasts 

• Hyaluronic acid mixed with the beads to stabilize the gel 

• Click chemistry to connect components into a durable material 

“The dermis is so complicated that we can’t grow it in a lab. We don’t even know what all its components are. That’s why we, and many others, think that we could possibly transplant the building blocks and then let the body make the dermis itself,” says Johan Junker, researcher at the Swedish Center for Disaster Medicine and Traumatology and docent in plastic surgery at Linköping University. 

The gel is designed to be injectable: it becomes liquid under pressure, allowing it to pass through a syringe, and solidifies again upon application. This property also enables 3D bioprinting of skin grafts containing living cells. 

In experiments on mice, small 3D-printed grafts were implanted under the skin. The results showed that fibroblasts survived, secreted substances to support dermis formation, and even contributed to the creation of blood vessels. 

“We see that the cells survive and it’s clear that they produce different substances that are needed to create new dermis. In addition, blood vessels are formed in the grafts, which is important for the tissue to survive in the body. We find this material very promising,“ says Johan Junker. 

MEDICA-tradefair.com; Source: Linköping University